


Stop, Loop, Repeat

by alyyks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amnesiac Shiro (Voltron), Gen, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, Mentioned Canon-Typical Violence, Mentioned Keith (Voltron), Minor Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) Has a Clone, Shiro (Voltron)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 09:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18340526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: Shiro keeps forgetting his name, who he is, the shapes of his nightmares.He knows darkness, sun-baked ground, flying, death.





	Stop, Loop, Repeat

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to antonomasia09 for instigating this, making it worse, and yelling very, very helpfully in its direction on multiple occasions. It's still not the fic I needed to finish ;)

His name is…

His name is…

They call him Lieutenant Shirogane, Takashi, like that name belongs to him and he belongs here, in,  and to the place he crashed. It’s made of harsh lights and restraints and faces he should know. He has… he has a mission, a goal, he might not know his name, or where he is, but there’s an urgency to what little he knows: They are coming. They, without names like everything else in his head, made of darkness and hurt and things words cannot describe, are coming for this place he crashed in, for Voltron, for destruction, and he, that creature-without-a-name, must warn them, must make them listen—

Then it’s Shiro, _Shiro_ , a name that comes with a hand on his shoulder, with the carefulness of someone who knows about being touch-starved, and Shiro—it must be his name, he must have a name beyond the clinging nightmares without forms he can’t give names to, beyond the knowledge of death in his bones, the sand and grit coming with the word _Champion_ …sometimes he remembers a number—wants this to be his, wants the care it is offered with. Shiro wants those soft colors and sun-baked ground to be his instead of the hurt and the dark and the harshness that comes to him in glimpses.

Shiro. He’s Shiro. He chooses to be, by responding to that name, by reminding himself of it, by reclaiming who is, was, had been, piece after painstakingly put-together piece.

Not everything comes back. It’s a relief. There are far too many things in his head now, the overwhelming and awe-inspiring presence of the Black Lion one of them, too much to replace, remember, examine. There’s too much hurt. There are too many times when a memory comes barreling into him without warning, leaves him frozen and open only to leave only cold sweat and nightmare behind.

Shiro doesn’t tell them, his team, those people with whom he shares experiences human words cannot encompass, about the missing pieces, the nightmares, the flashbacks. He thinks… He thinks he should know some of them more than he knows them in the present.

He thinks he’s not fooling them. He knows he’s not fooling Keith.

But Shiro—the name he chooses, the person he chooses to be, not _Lieutenant_ , not _117-9875,_ not _Champion_ —for all his missing pieces, be they physical or mental, knows he didn’t get to this point, to Voltron and the endless stars and flying like breathing, by letting things drag him down. So he keeps going.

He doesn’t remember it of course, but he thinks he never learned the meaning of giving up.

+

 

His name is.

He knows his name. He has to have one, something that wasn’t a project designation, has to know that name, has to know where he comes from and what he’s going back to but when he thinks too much about it, about everything, knowledge and memories flow through his fingers like water. It’s the absence of knowledge and memories that drives him, a bone-deep certainty he’s not supposed to be there. There: a Galra ship, a frozen hellscape, a rebel post, a stolen fighter.

He doesn’t remember what he says, what he does, that he’s now hopelessly drifting in space trying to catch up to Voltron.

In the dark, in space, he mouths the shapes of the things he knows: flying, Voltron, human, team. The hallucination with his face, what he assumes to be his face, on the ship. How much it hurt to cauterize his own flesh. The burning numbing cold of endless snow. The knowledge of death.

He has to have a name. The one he keeps seeing when he closes his eyes, without knowing his name, the dark hair, team-but-more, he had to have called him something.

He has to be someone.

They call him Shiro.

They call him Shiro and it both fits and does not fit. It seems bigger than himself somehow. Keith—dark hair, team-but-more, careful but strong touch and an impression of color—calls him Shiro, and there’s meaning in those two syllables that he can’t… can’t grasp, can’t hear, can’t remember.

There’s a lot going on. His head hurts, continually. He was missing for a year—another year gone, a part of him thinks, and there’s a fear in that, a fear of endings, a fear of missing out on his own life that he can’t recall the origin of.

They call him Shiro and tell him Black is waiting for him and another thousand things but—

It might be the memory loss, again, the trauma, not wanting to remember anything that could have happened to him for a year in—witch, dark nightmares, her claws, a number, her magic in him—the hand of the Galra Empire. Nothing fits.

Coran calls him Number One and tells him he’s all good. But he still has a headache he can’t shake.

But he’s still not himself.

They call him Shiro. He has to remember everyday to answer to that name. In his nightmares he hears _117-9875, Champion, Subject Y0XT39_.

He calls himself nothing at all.

+

His name is…

His name comes from very far, from someone else. From people who know him, even when he doesn’t know himself. He’s not sure of who he is, is supposed to be, of what happened to bring this twilight.

He has fragments: he remembers not having a body, he remembers not being himself but he doesn’t remember who he is supposed to be, what he’s supposed to know. He remembers not remembering. He remembers hurting, headaches, numbers, the knowledge of death.

He remembers flying.

_ Shiro? _ He hears. A name. His name? Who belongs to that name, which one of him? Was there ever a difference—and the thought is examined, pondered, discarded. It does not matter anymore.

He doesn’t know the people waiting for him and he knows them. He has seen them for months as strangers and he has waited months to be able to see them again.

_ Shiro. _

His name is Shiro. It’s a name that belongs to sun-baked ground and endless stars. It’s a name he chose and a name he was given. It’s a name he forgot, and forgot, and forgot.

It’s who he chooses to be, again and again and again.

Opening his eyes is an insurmountable task. Everything is a blur of colors bathed in the soft gold of an alien sunset. Someone is holding him, with the carefulness of someone who knows about being touch-starved. Someone else has his hand—his hand, only hand, the nightmare of the witch’s claw in him, her magic twisting him— in theirs. Someone was touching his head, and he can still feel the tingle of their touch, feather-light against his skin. There are people: the people who keep giving him his name back, his identity back. Team, and family.

Putting the pieces of him together takes a long time. He clings to his name and to this: sitting in the Black Lion, to the back and right of Keith’s seat, left hand holding him up, and seeing the back of Keith, seeing the man he has become.

Shiro’s head is full of holes.

His being is full of holes.

But he clings to this also: he has already has had his ending, twice and more. He already knows what comes with that—and in the face of this, the knowledge of death is a small thing, just another step on a long road. The fear of missing out on his own life, still too nebulous to be called knowledge, he puts aside.

Having to be someone he doesn’t choose to be—Lieutenant Shirogane, 117-9875, Champion, a weapon, Project Kuron—he puts aside.

“Shiro,” Keith says, gloved hand firm on Shiro’s remaining hand, support and trust despite the nightmare of Shiro—a version of him but still a Shiro, one who could have been and never had the time to become—going after him until neither remained. Shiro—him, the others, all the parts of him that make one person—for all his head is full of holes, will see this replaying in his nightmares for the rest of his life.

He is who he chooses to be, again and again and again. He’s Shiro, missing limbs and missing memories and missing time—Shiro, with Voltron and the stars and his team and Keith, and he has yet to find the thing that will stop him from being himself.


End file.
